America, My Adopted Country

America is my adopted country. A country that was for me, from afar, an affair of both head and heart. A matter of love at first read, and certainly at first sight. Not all love affairs are written in tablets of blood or rivers of tears. Some loves are more of the mind and some are prone to sweat rather than tears, bleeding only sparingly. Like so many who came to this country as adults, many by choice, I fell in love with the idea of America, as much as I first fell in love with a mythical place, a City of Angels it is called, out on the West Coast, a place I thought was surely part of Disneyland, ruled by wizards and run as a non-stop magic show, where everyone gets to play every part.

It took some time to find the warts in the pink fairy towers, and the potholes in the yellow brick roads, though even then, they never seemed beyond repair. After all, I have little cause to complain. I arrived in this country, a wide-eyed patriot-by-proxy with barely $50 in my pocket and a single person I could call upon. Which I did, for about a month, till their patience ran out (the reasons forming the gist of stories told to this day, as they grow ever more embellished). I landed dressed in a matching red white and blue “outfit,” much as one would when they come to discover a land. A modern day Columbus - minus the feathers - dressed to kill, or so I thought, being fashionably way out of date (as I found out later). I was 22 years of age, with little by way of material goods or connections, but much in the ways of confidence. Right, wrong, real or feigned - it turns out that confidence is all that really matters in this lovely land of milk and money. Indeed, in many ways, America was, and still is, a confidence game at heart. As befits a place of vast horizons, and endless possibilities, where dreams can come true – and even if not, there’s always a new dream just around the corner, there to be had, or die in the trying.

I promptly found me a job, practically on my third day from arrival, not that I qualified or was legally entitled to hold it, or was all that English fluent, but in those days no one cared, as jobs were everywhere, begging to be filled no matter by who or how. A month later I bought a (very) used, very large car, with very worn tires, using my slim earnings of two weeks. I who never could even think of owning a car, even after a year of working in that old country I came from (never mind those flat tires!). Within three months I found myself somehow married to a man who was, what you’d call, quite “alternative”, in a Los Angeles kind of way. A theatre actor and an anti-war activist, who taught me what’s what about Vietnam and Woodstock and the ins and outs of proper hippy attire (that red, white and blue outfit was promptly discarded, never to be seen again, replaced by, well, you can imagine, but always complete with a matching head band).

I did eventually learn to drive along LA’s straight interminable streets and execute that crazy left turn against red light, if never without a tinge of fear (even now I can feel the impending panic as I attempt that turn on one of those super-wide busy main streets, caught alone and exposed in the middle of the intersection, cars honking every which way. Hesitating just a moment too long, knowing full well, how pathetic it must look like to those who are practically born with a wheel in their hand).

I found out that this land, this crazy patchwork where people from all over the world congregated to call it home, brushing against one another, sometimes chaffing sometimes relishing both friction and touch. Whoever they were, however they arrived, for many America was indeed a place of refuge, and also a place for wandering souls to find new selves and get equipped with new dreams. Back in the day, this was that one place in the world, where failure was considered but a momentary setback, a pause on the way up the mountain. “If you believe you can you are half-way there”, was a line I thought I invented till I found out that, nope, it was Teddy Roosevelt who said it first (and so much better).

Along the way, I met countless people everywhere and found most to be amazingly open, colorful, energetic, exciting, different, full of hopes that recognize no barrier grounded in that funny thing called “reality”. I met many whose hearts were filled with boundless optimism, who had enough energy to start several times over, who indeed believed in that “never say die” euphemism. Far from grating, I still find the diversity of the different races, ethnicities, the many aptitudes and attitudes of all who live across this vast country, at once colorful and energizing. Well, I do thrive on differences, or maybe it’s that confidence thing again.

Above all, I have come into my English, which I believe was always my natural language (perhaps we all have one?), the one true love affair that has never left me since. A gift that keeps on giving as the years go by, getting better with time, like the finest of wines. It’s become my lingua franca, the open sesame doorway to magical new worlds, to history’s hitherto unknown hidden caves and to the colorful, improbable spectacles of imagined futures. A true and proper language for a Disneyland of all the free spirits of the world who long to be never aging Peter Pans and ever fleeting Tinker Bells.

Not insignificantly, and counter to what we may read nowadays, no place in the world was as tolerant of differences as America’s West Coast was in the seventies. At least that’s how it appeared to me, a foreign arrival, coming from a place where tolerance of others not like oneself – no matter how much or how little - was unknown. A place that, if anything, has grown even more intolerant over the years.

I should say that, for whatever reason, I never felt deprived or slighted in this lovely country called US of A. Even as I still speak with an pronounced accent, I never feel estranged as I did in my country of origin where conformism was and still is the rule, now more so than ever. For myself, I also realize, that some of that optimism and innocence I so cherish, owes in part, to most of this country’s residents not being overly saddled with too much knowledge about a tortuous and tortured world history.

Indeed, for Americans it seems to have all started one fine day around 1776, after a glorious revolution when the yoke of some befuddled far-off rulers was thrown off, and an amazing new constitution was written, the likes of which the world has never seen before. Never mind a few omissions and a “few” other blind spots typical of that day. Never mind the American indigenous who kind of paid dearly for the grand vision of others from elsewhere. In the end, some three or four hundred years later, what still matters is that once upon a time, there was indeed a grand purpose. Several of them, in fact. There were ideals too. Give me your dispossessed. Your lost and huddled. So, I came and did not feel lost again. And my once inexplicable angers are now never without a cause.

Yet here I am, decades later – in another state, disillusioned, troubled, as nearly everyone else is around, increasingly aware that much has gone wrong all over this land, of which I only ever knew but a tiny sliver. I realize that many who came quite unwillingly to this country suffered incomprehensible injuries to justice, to body and spirit, injuries that could not be easily healed even 100’s of years later. There are still many others who never got a chance to play those confidence games, as the realities of life got hardened over the years and opportunities shrunk.

Strangely, even with all I now know, and despite the country’s many flaws, I remain somehow hopeful. Hopeful that my Disneyland, that land of dreams and fairy tales, is still there even if shrouded in a fog, even as it seems to recede. Hopeful that for many, adversities can still become teachable moments, even if the shine of optimism has worn off some.

This, even as I still crave – and have the fondest memories - of that strange delightful ecstasy I felt when I first set foot in the great Coastal West, at 22 years of age, wearing red, white and blue, complete with matching hat and shoes, with but $50 to spare.

In that spirit, Happy Independence Day to all.